The Winged Ass. Intertextuality and Narration in Apuleius' Metamorphoses (original) (raw)
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A Gendered Reading for the Character of Psyche in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses
Mnemosyne, 2014
In analyses of the Cupid and Psyche story from Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, scholars have been faced with the issue of explaining the presence of a prominent female character. The usual response has been to interpret Psyche symbolically, either as a mirror of the male character Lucius and his journey, or as an allegory for the Soul’s journey or for the myth of Isis. However, this approach of turning Psyche into an abstract symbol negates the very substance of the issue, namely her femaleness. By foregrounding Psyche’s gender and making a reading of the text specifically for aspects of her femaleness, her nature and character in relation to marriage and family is revealed as a dominant theme, and a key motivating factor for much of the action of the narrative. Fully understanding and acknowledging this allows not only for new and more integrated interpretations of Psyche, but also opens avenues of exploration for the interpretation of other characters in the novel.
The medieval legend of Mélusine is strongly linked to Greek and Latin literary imagination. This is not only because of the presence of the metamorphosis topic, but also due to a specific similarity with the myth of Cupid and Psyche, narrated in The Golden Ass of Apuleius. The article analyzes and compares the two stories and takes a brief look at the theme of Mélusine in two twentieth century authors: André Breton and the Italian poet Antonio Porta, author of Melusina. Una ballata e un diario (1987). Through this relationship between mythological and fictional contents of the Melusinian theme, the above mentioned writings might be considered as an outcome of the indirect influence exerted by the classical story of Cupid and Psyche in the following centuries.
As far as myth and ritual are concerned, we have only recently wit- nessed a hermeneutical shift from R. Merkelbach’s allegorizing view of the novel as a mystery text to the paradigm of initiation where young people experience the rite of passage to adulthood. On the basis of a new bio-ritual, psycho-anthropolo- gical model, it will be argued that the ancient novels, which are built on tradi- tional wondertales, focus upon, rework, revolve around and help to overcome the central crisis of puberty, very often from the vantage point of the girl. The change of focus will be explored through Apuleius’ Golden Ass, a rather atypical novel that, due to Lucius’ initiation into the secret rites of Isis in Book 11, has served as the model for mystery interpretation until now. However, despite all the differences from the ideal romances, Apuleius, too, deals with the crucial threshold of adolescence. It will be shown that Lucius, the young protagonist, acts out his male obsessions with love and sexuality, while the narration is similar to a dream sequence on the level of a fairy-tale folk structure. Furthermore, the ‘girl’s tragedy’ coming of age is also debated through the medium of the ass: within the texture of the narrative the sexual nightmare is particularly high- lighted in Charite’s drama, which is again refracted in the inlay tale of Cupid and Psyche.